


Brand New Start

by clarissefahre (imesvier)



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5593624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imesvier/pseuds/clarissefahre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Therese felt like there was a line that followed her collarbones trying to divide her body into two. The thought of being around Carol made her feel anxious, her brain was behaving like a storm and no wave of thinking was able to be finished. At the same time, she was definitively feeling more joyful than before. Her heart was beating faster and she even caught herself smiling while brushing her teeth in the kitchen sink."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brand New Start

**Author's Note:**

> "Brand New Start" by Little Joy inspired me to write this. It's a modern song but I felt like it matched the idea in my head perfectly. The first part of this text is actually three stanzas from the lyrics.

Take advantage of the season  
To take off your overcoat.  
The spirits will lift off those young men you provoke,  
But I’ll be laughing, knowing I will take you home.

All this time they had me thinking,  
Love’s a boat that’s long been sinking.  
But you made the claim  
That taking a chance is embracing the change.  
I count my blessings knowing you will take me home.

There ain’t no lover like the one I’ve got,  
Ain’t no lover like the one I’ve got.  
She and I and a brand new start,  
Gotta give all my love.

❄ ❄ ❄

Two days had passed since Carol received the keys of her new apartment. “My apartment”. Those two words kept echoing inside her head. “Mine and Therese’s”, she corrected herself mentally, as if by extending the phrase she could insert Therese permanently in her life.

She looked at the main room the same way kings had glanced at the land in front of them, feeling countless possibilities of creation. Carol pictured herself filling the rooms with furniture, paintings, chandeliers, curtains, or simply placing a big mattress on the floor and sleeping by the light of a candle.

Her major plan for that place was to turn it into a fort where she could feel comfortable and rearrange her thoughts. She needed it after everything she had been through since Harge sought the injunction. She had already brought the most important things she owned. Everything was unorganized but they were there, at least. 

The rooms were quite big and she loved it, the only noticeable defect was the the color of the living room. The place was used as office by the last owner, who ran a small company. “Not that it explains this aberration on the walls” Carol thought as she continued to observe the space. The walls were painted in a shade of grey that made her feel like she was inside a dirty box each time she entered it. 

She decided she’d get rid of it by painting the room with the help of Therese. Carol couldn’t quite understand why she thought calling Therese to do it with her would be a reasonable idea, but she did. Paying a professional painter wasn’t hard after all, but she wanted Therese with her and she’d seize every opportunity available to be in her presence.

❄ ❄ ❄ 

Therese woke up as soon as her body allowed her to in that chilly morning. Carol had invited her to the apartment so they could spend some time together… painting walls, mostly. If anyone else had called her to do that, she would have given a excuse for not leaving the house. But it was Carol.

She acknowledged that things wouldn’t be the same between them, simply by the fact that the time they spent apart from each other had affected their lives in different ways. She had matured and “created some sort of shell”, in the words of Dannie, after Carol left her in Waterloo. Therese was only now learning how to deal with the shield she formed. Carol had also changed, but after that night in the Oak Room, she knew she was willing to love her regardless of their differences.

Therese felt like there was a line that followed her collarbones trying to divide her body into two. The thought of being around Carol made her feel anxious, her brain was behaving like a storm, no wave of thinking was able to be finished. At the same time, she was definitively feeling more joyful than before. Her heart was beating faster and she even caught herself smiling while brushing her teeth in the kitchen sink.

❄ ❄ ❄

Therese rang the bell that was beside the door of the apartment. She didn’t know where to look at. She kept her eyes focused on her own shoes, waiting for the noise that would notify Carol in front of her. After a few seconds, she heard it and looked up. Carol looked astonishing as always. Her eyes were the shiniest things in sight, even shinier than the jewelry she was wearing and by Therese’s surprise, her hair was already perfectly done. It was almost comic to imagine such a magnificent-looking woman using a paint roller.

“Hello there! How are you?” Carol said warmly before wrapping her arms around Therese for a hug.

“Hi, I’m good, thank you.” Therese responded while entering the room. When Carol told her the apartment was a “nice big one”, she thought it was some kind of artifice of persuasion, hiding her real intention of saying “It fits you in there too, please be there with me”. Turns out in reality it was truly spacious.

“Did you sleep well? I’m sorry for making you wake up so early, it’s the only time I have to do this… I’ll see Rindy in a supervised meeting in the afternoon and the light that comes through that window will only get worse…”

“Really? That’s great, Carol. I’m happy for you. And you don’t need to mind about me, I’m alright…”

Carol was dispersed, glancing at the window like someone who’s disappointed with the weather. Therese knew she wasn’t looking at anything, neither absorving the temperature from outside. She was simply immersed in her thoughts about Rindy. 

Carol turned back rapdily with a smile in the face. “You look beautiful. For a moment I forgot you changed your hair. You always come to my mind with long hair, for some reason.” She said while making her way to the kitchen. 

Therese stayed in the living room, looking at the walls, the floor, the frame of the window, trying to picture all the possibilities the big room was offering them.

“Hey slowpoke, won’t you help me?”, Therese heard. She turned around and saw Carol carrying two cans of paint through their handles.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were going to bring them now”, she quickly apologized, walking closer to Carol and taking one of the cans.

“Goddammit, these are heavier than I thought. Let’s put them here.”

They placed the cans close to one of the walls and faced each other in silence for a bit. 

“So… which color did you buy?” Therese questioned while smiling. 

“Oh, of course”. Carol kneeled on the floor and opened one can, she looked up to Therese and waited to hear a comment about it. None came. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I love it” Therese finally responded, looking at the light yellow paint in front of her. The color matched Carol’s eyes so beautifully it seemed created for the sole purpose of being around her. Therese freed herself from the trance she was caught into and saw Carol smiling at her and patting her leg as she got up.

Carol opened the record player in the master bedroom and turned the volume on so they were able to listen it while doing their work in the other room. The first song took a while to start but she knew in advance which vinyl would be playing. Billie Holiday’s vinyl. 

She went back to the living room and saw the small figure of Therese with a paint roller, already coloring the tedious grey wall and bringing life to it. She did her best to not make a sound and appreciate the scene as much as she could. “Clearly some sort of metaphor”, she thought, laughing internally. 

“What’s wrong?” Therese asked.

“Nothing”, Carol afirmed with a smile in her face, picking the paint roller available. 

“Soon you’ll get tired of those songs, you’re always listening to them” Therese said, with a fake disdain in her voice.

“How could I?” The other woman asked while moving the roller against the wall for the first time that day. She felt a strange kind of relief and pleasure doing so. 

❄ ❄ ❄

Over half an hour had passed and none of them felt like disturbing the silence that was built up. Not yet. Therese kept painting her side of the wall. The roller going up and down, leaving the yellow trail. As simple as the action seemed, it still felt otherworldly.

She remembered this one time in middle school when she sat on the grass with a friend late in the afternoon and listened her telling stories about the things she learnt in books. The girl told her that Van Gogh used to be obsessed with yellow paint, so obsessed that he’d eat it when sad, believing that the yellow color was happiness itself.

Therese didn’t accredit it at first, she thought there was some level of exaggeration on it, either on the girl’s version or in the book. But recalling of her old self and how she had felt the past month, she’d surely have eaten a whole can of paint if it meant she could have the happiness she was feeling right now with Carol by her side. She looked at the woman next to her and her insides felt warmer, like the skin burning by sun rays. Her heart was flooding in joy. 

“Are you going somewhere?” Carol asked Therese, after seeing her stop painting and leave her roller in the support. 

“Yes, I’m thirsty” she responded. 

Carol smiled and returned to face the wall, suddenly proud of the work she was doing. The young woman was still behind her, near the support and the cans. Therese saw that open bottle, with that beautiful yellow thing inside it. She felt the urge to do something with it. Therese wouldn’t eat the paint, of course. Instead, she carefully dipped both the palms of her hands in the paint, one at a time. 

Therese approached Carol and kissed the back of her shoulder through the fabric of her blouse. Even though there was a barrier between her lips and Carol’s skin, she could feel the warmth of her body, along with the sleek texture of the silk shirt. Carol turned around and saw Therese looking up to her, the closest they had been since the quick hug they shared. Therese slowly decreased the distance between their faces and pressed her lips against Carol’s and felt its softness, before placing both her hands around Carol’s neck and deepening the kiss.

Carol put one of her hands on top of Therese’s, in the moment that the kiss was interrupted. Therese let her go. Carol ran her hand through the crook of her own neck and looked down. There was paint all over her fingers. She looked up again and searched for Therese in the room but she wasn’t there anymore.

“Therese?!” Carol exclaimed from the living room.

Therese could barely hold back her laughter as she tried to drink her cup of water in the kitchen, hearing Carol grumble “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?!”. She went back to the main room and saw Carol with her hand on her waist and giving Therese the funniest look, trying to be serious but not being able to hide the grin on her face. 

“Do you want to talk about this?!” Carol said pointing to her still yellow neck. 

“I don’t know what got into me, I’m sorry. There is too much paint anyways, two cans are more than enough for this room, don’t you think?” 

Carol tilted her head back and filled the room with the sound of her laughter. “The paint felt surprisingly cold, just do you know. It gave me the chills” she said.

“Are you sure?” Therese asked, chuckling at Carol’s contagious laughter.

“Of what, my darling?”

“That it was the paint that gave you the chills, I mean.”

“Maybe if you kiss me one more time I can tell you with more certainty”

Carol winked at Therese.

“Maybe I could just put more paint on you and figure it out” Therese said as she laughed and threatened to dip her finger inside the paint.

“Don’t you dare!” Carol shouted, coming closer to Therese and holding her arm down quickly with one hand. Both women were laughing hysterically.

Carol found her hand now on Therese’s shoulder. She leaned on and kissed her lips, realeasing the arm she was holding. She felt Therese’s small hand travelling through her side and her fingers holding her hand tightly.

“Let’s clean up this mess first, alright?” Carol said before kissing Therese’s forehead, still holding hands with her.

Carol guided Therese to the bathroom. Therese leaned agaisnt the door frame and watched Carol’s every move, regretting immensively not having brought her camera.

“How do you think it’s going to be?” Therese asked.

“Hopefully it will come off easily.” Carol said while rubbing some paint out of her neck in front of the big mirror.

Therese couldn’t help but smile. “No, I mean, how do you think it will be… living together?”

Carol grinned. She turned over slowly and approached Therese. “Well… we shall be fine as long as I keep the paint can away from you” she afirmed.

Their bodies were close to each other once again, like it was impossible for them to keep a fair distance. Therese’s head touched Carol’s shoulder as she tilted it to hide her face from embarrassment. Carol kissed the top of her head gently, waiting for the young woman to look at her again.

Soon it was there, the face she adored in it’s most radiant and pure form. All the details of Therese’s brows, eyes, nose and lips disposed in front of Carol like a landscape, with millions of things to discover and contemplate in one single frame. 

A smile crossed both women’s face and Carol couldn’t help but feel an immense satisfaction when noticing Therese’s dimples showing up in her cheeks. 

Therese was looking deep into her eyes, trying to figure out a proper response for her question. “You can’t”, Carol thought. All she could think about was Therese at that very moment, not the past, nor the future.

“I don’t know how it will to be, actually, but I can’t wait to figure it out.” Carol said, passing her index finger over the tip of Therese’s nose and seeing it now smudge in yellow.


End file.
